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Wealth and poverty, and all inequalities of that order, are
made ground of complaint. But this is to ignore that the Sage
demands no equality in such matters: he cannot think that to own
many things is to be richer or that the powerful have the better
of the simple; he leaves all such preoccupations to another kind
of man. He has learned that life on earth has two distinct forms,
the way of the Sage and the way of the mass, the Sage intent upon
the sublimest, upon the realm above, while those of the more
strictly human type fall, again, under two classes, the one
reminiscent of virtue and therefore not without touch with good,
the other mere populace, serving to provide necessaries to the
better sort.
But what of murder? What of the feebleness that brings men under
slavery to the passions?
Is it any wonder that there should be failing and error, not in
the highest, the intellectual, Principle but in Souls that are
like undeveloped children? And is not life justified even so if
it is a training ground with its victors and its vanquished?
You are wronged; need that trouble an immortal? You are put to
death; you have attained your desire. And from the moment your
citizenship of the world becomes irksome you are not bound to it.
Our adversaries do not deny that even here there is a system of
law and penalty: and surely we cannot in justice blame a dominion
which awards to every one his due, where virtue has its honour,
and vice comes to its fitting shame, in which there are not
merely representations of the gods, but the gods themselves,
watchers from above, and- as we read- easily rebutting human
reproaches, since they lead all things in order from a beginning
to an end, allotting to each human being, as life follows life, a
fortune shaped to all that has preceded- the destiny which, to
those that do not penetrate it, becomes the matter of boorish
insolence upon things divine.
A man's one task is to strive towards making himself perfect-
though not in the idea- really fatal to perfection- that to be
perfect is possible to himself alone.
We must recognize that other men have attained the heights of
goodness; we must admit the goodness of the celestial spirits,
and above all of the gods- those whose presence is here but their
contemplation in the Supreme, and loftiest of them, the lord of
this All, the most blessed Soul. Rising still higher, we hymn the
divinities of the Intellectual Sphere, and, above all these, the
mighty King of that dominion, whose majesty is made patent in the
very multitude of the gods.
It is not by crushing the divine unto a unity but by displaying
its exuberance- as the Supreme himself has displayed it- that we
show knowledge of the might of God, who, abidingly what He is,
yet creates that multitude, all dependent on Him, existing by Him
and from Him.
This Universe, too, exists by Him and looks to Him- the Universe
as a whole and every God within it- and tells of Him to men, all
alike revealing the plan and will of the Supreme.
These, in the nature of things, cannot be what He is, but that
does not justify you in contempt of them, in pushing yourself
forward as not inferior to them.
The more perfect the man, the more compliant he is, even towards
his fellows; we must temper our importance, not thrusting
insolently beyond what our nature warrants; we must allow other
beings, also, their place in the presence of the Godhead; we may
not set ourselves alone next after the First in a dream-flight
which deprives us of our power of attaining identity with the
Godhead in the measure possible to the human Soul, that is to
say, to the point of likeness to which the Intellectual-Principle
leads us; to exalt ourselves above the Intellectual-Principle is
to fall from it.
Yet imbeciles are found to accept such teaching at the mere sound
of the words "You, yourself, are to be nobler than all else,
nobler than men, nobler than even gods." Human audacity is very
great: a man once modest, restrained and simple hears, "You,
yourself, are the child of God; those men whom you used to
venerate, those beings whose worship they inherit from antiquity,
none of these are His children; you without lifting a hand are
nobler than the very heavens"; others take up the cry: the issue
will be much as if in a crowd all equally ignorant of figures,
one man were told that he stands a thousand cubic feet; he will
naturally accept his thousand cubits even though the others
present are said to measure only five cubits; he will merely tell
himself that the thousand indicates a considerable figure.
Another point: God has care for you; how then can He be
indifferent to the entire Universe in which you exist?
We may be told that He is too much occupied to look upon the
Universe, and that it would not be right for Him to do so; yet,
when He looks down and upon these people, is He not looking
outside Himself and upon the Universe in which they exist? If He
cannot look outside Himself so as to survey the Kosmos, then
neither does He look upon them.
But they have no need of Him?
The Universe has need of Him, and He knows its ordering and its
indwellers and how far they belong to it and how far to the
Supreme, and which of the men upon it are friends of God, mildly
acquiescing with the Kosmic dispensation when in the total course
of things some pain must be brought to them- for we are to look
not to the single will of any man but to the universe entire,
regarding every one according to worth but not stopping for such
things where all that may is hastening onward.
Not one only kind of being is bent upon this quest, which brings
bliss to whatsoever achieves, and earns for the others a future
destiny in accord with their power. No man, therefore, may
flatter himself that he alone is competent; a pretension is not a
possession; many boast though fully conscious of their lack and
many imagine themselves to possess what was never theirs and even
to be alone in possessing what they alone of men never had.
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